2024-28 Strategic Plan
Goal 1 / Student Success
Forge partnerships and experiences that equip students as engaged, critical thinkers who thrive in the classroom and beyond.
Objective 1: Continuously adapt existing space and shape direction for future transformations that meet evolving, emerging curricular and cocurricular needs.
Objective 2: Formally integrate and intentionally scaffold library instruction across the undergraduate and graduate curricula. Expand library instruction to include new and emerging literacies to support students as critical thinkers.
Objective 3: Establish and assess a coordinated instruction program with particular emphasis on scaling to expand support across other physical campuses and virtual learning environments.
Objective 4: Formally integrate and embed the libraries into more KU courses and experiences.
Objective 5: Propel, energize, and celebrate undergraduate research.
Objective 6: Expand Open Educational Resources (OER) offerings and utilization, both at KU and globally.
Objective 7: Reduce other expenses to strengthen affordability for all library users.
Goal 2 / Healthy & Vibrant Communities
Elevate our communities by fostering individual wellbeing, sparking interpersonal connections, and advancing society.
Objective 8: Develop a broader diversity of perspectives for our organization, our communities, and the discipline of academic librarianship.
Objective 9: Support community wellbeing through our spaces, resources, and platforms.
Objective 10: Cultivate a culture of belonging through intentional strategies that support recruitment, retention, and the health and wellbeing of the library team.
Objective 11: More fully connect the libraries team to the campus and community by raising profiles and accessibility of individuals, units, and cross-unit functions/workflows.
Objective 12: Increase engagement, cultivating broad community platforms and the recognition of KU Libraries as premier partners for research and teaching collaborations.
Objective 13: Lead and engage in partnerships that serve to expand connectivity across the university and advance broader community engagement goals.
Objective 14: Expand and promote awareness and use of the libraries’ creative makerspaces.
Objective 15: Build leisure collections and develop targeted creative collections to meet community interests and needs.
- Objective 16: Collaboratively develop and balance the fiscal, environmental, historical, functional, and aesthetic sustainability of KU Libraries' facilities.
Objective 17: Build momentum around a shared vision of a holistic, library-wide program plan that guides the transformation of new and innovative library spaces to propel university goals.
Objective 18: Partner with campus leadership to propel a complete renovation of Watson Library, transforming the environment to elevate accessibility, belonging and wellness; advance research and discovery; and promote academic success.
Objective 19: Diversify funding sources to support innovative library initiatives and talent development.
Objective 20: Create intentional strategies for the library team to dedicate more time to the exploration and pursuit of new and emerging trends.
Goal 3 / Research & Discovery
Amplify researcher impact through expertise, community, and diverse resources that propel knowledge creation and sharing.
Objective 21: Develop resources to increase capacity for digitization and open delivery of resources.
Objective 22: Strategically expand capacity for and adoption of open access (OA) publishing of KU scholarly output.
Objective 23: Lead the development of an institutional strategy for public access to research data.
Objective 24: Upgrade and maximize the value of our core technology platforms.
Objective 25: Integrate and enhance the user experience of our public-facing technology platforms.
Objective 26: Clarify the libraries’ role in ongoing campus efforts to establish records management practices for electronic records.
Objective 27: Contribute to the access of diverse perspectives to strengthen and enrich research at KU.
Objective 28: Expand initiatives contributing to economic development and technology commercialization.
Objective 29: Prepare for and cultivate expertise in new and emerging specializations for librarianship.
Objective 30: Develop new and expanded capabilities to advance, showcase, and celebrate research at KU.
Objective 31: Lead new consortial and cooperative strategies in the university, state, region, and beyond.
Objective 32: Develop initiatives, services, and resources to advance campus internationalization goals.
Objective 33: Broaden the culture of impact-informed librarianship, encompassing effective library assessment and impactful storytelling.
Objective 34: Implement workflows and processes to manage and streamline significant library initiatives. Evaluate internal library operations and systems for enhanced performance.